Category: Recovery

  • What a difference sleep makes! The previous two nights I barely slept at all. Both nights I fell asleep easy, but the dreams I’ve written about so many times before woke me up pretty soon after drifting off, and there was no going back to sleep after that. But last night I finally slept from…

  • For most of my life I had a habit of waiting for things to be “just right” before I would do something good for myself like getting clean or start healing an inner wound. But as life tends to go, those perfect conditions really just never really came. So I carried the pain and anger…

  • This is a topic that feels a little strange for me to write about because there was a time in my life when I would not accept accountability in any form. To say I reacted badly when anyone tried to hold me accountable would be a massive understatement. I wasn’t willing to let others do…

  • I was remembering a conversation I had many years ago. At the time, I had just gone from building power lines to working in IT for a massive online trading corporation with offices around the country. It was a big shift, not just in the work itself, but in the culture. I had to learn…

  • My wife said something this morning that made us both laugh. She looked at me and said, “You’re always in a good mood now, even when you haven’t slept… and it’s kind of creepy!” She said it because I hadn’t slept well last night, yet here I was this morning still happy, still in a…

  • Happy Friday! Have you ever heard of “mental Kung Fu”? I hadn’t either, at least not outside the martial arts world. The phrase might sound mystical or exotic, like something reserved for monks or fighters, but it really isn’t. It’s actually really simple. “Mental Kung Fu” is just applying the principles of martial arts like…

  • I woke up to another beautiful day here today. As part of my daily morning routine I checked in on the recovery community across a few platforms. There’s almost always something encouraging there. People helping each other, lifting each other up. It’s a good way to start the day. But then I saw a headline…

  • Today is a beautiful day here in Santa Fe! The ravens are flying, talking to each other as they ride invisible currents in the air. Other birds are singing their songs, the finches, bluebirds, and robins, all busy doing what they do. It’s mostly sunny so no clouds interrupting the wide open view of the…

  • Have you ever found yourself as an adult still craving approval like you did when you were a kid? Still hoping someone notices you and says something like, “Hey, you’re doing really good” or something like that? I didn’t realize until recent years just how much of my life was shaped by chasing that. I…

  • I spent most of my life searching for a spiritual path that I could feel and see the truth in. One that was me, not one I was told to believe or threatened with hell if I didn’t. One that I could feel the truth of with every fiber of my being. Christianity never did…